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Thanks, David Martin.

The post Five Al Jazeera journalists killed in Gaza by Israel’s ‘psychopathic liar’: Marwan Bishara appeared first on LewRockwell.

Steven Athanail wrote:

Thank you for publishing Pastereich this  morning and for keeping a spotlight on the “Covid” hoax .I  remember that Dr. Ron Paul was the first prominent individual to describe the global criminal terror with that term . Indeed it was exactly what I believed as a practicing physician during the early months of 2020. The neglected features of the hoax include careful planning and coordination, data manipulation, psychological manipulation, fraudulent testing, and the poisoning of selected populations to induce panic and compliance with medical tyranny. None of these features has been adequately addressed by the incumbent “public health” regime of the U.S. LRC remains a pertinent and essential counterweight to the ubiquitous official propaganda causing so much confusion and harm today.

The post Hasbara History appeared first on LewRockwell.

______________________________________________________________________________________

da Zerohedge

(Versione audio della traduzione disponibile qui: https://open.substack.com/pub/fsimoncelli/p/la-malattia-europea-la-germania-entra)

La Germania sta perdendo la sua reputazione di stato fiscalmente responsabile. Attraverso una spesa incontrollata il governo federale sta trascinando il Paese in acque tempestose.

Germany has just greenlighted the "largest sustained deficit in post-war history." What is the Polymarket on the next ECB QE? pic.twitter.com/kIfS4E78AV

L'Handelsblatt ha segnalato un nuovo deficit di bilancio. Entro il 2029 si prevede che i debiti aggiuntivi precedentemente non finanziati aumenteranno da €144 miliardi a €150 miliardi, secondo diverse fonti governative. Non fanno parte del debito federale pianificato, ma si aggiungono a esso. Più di recente la coalizione ha concordato di anticipare al 2027 un'integrazione pensionistica prevista per le madri, aggiungendo altri €4,5 miliardi di spesa.

Bisogna dirlo chiaramente: sotto la guida del Cancelliere Friedrich Merz la Germania ha abbandonato gli ultimi tentativi di rigore fiscale e di un bilancio conservativo. I costi del consenso politico di una coalizione instabile, progettata per evitare conflitti, vengono scaricati sui contribuenti.

Un crollo prevedibile

Questi numeri sono già allarmanti, ma siamo ancora nella quiete prima della tempesta. Nel 2025 si prevede che il rapporto debito/PIL netto raggiungerà il 3,2%. Questo include circa €82 miliardi di nuovo debito federale, €15 miliardi di prestiti aggiuntivi da stati e comuni e circa €37 miliardi di “fondi speciali” federali, ovvero debito ombra fuori bilancio.

Questa previsione crollerà nel momento in cui l'economia tedesca sprofonderà ulteriormente in recessione. L'aumento della disoccupazione e il calo delle entrate fiscali metteranno ulteriormente a dura prova il bilancio federale e i fondi della previdenza sociale. Mentre i politici si sentono ancora tranquilli con un debito pubblico al 63% del PIL, includendo il programma di spesa da €1.000 miliardi del governo Merz, i livelli di debito potrebbero superare il 90% del PIL entro la fine di questo decennio.

La Germania sta ora praticando una politica fiscale sconosciuta alla maggior parte dei suoi cittadini. Le abitudini dei PIIGS sono arrivate, ma non sotto forma di clima soleggiato, bensì di cattiva gestione delle finanze pubbliche.

Le entrate fiscali non possono più colmare i divari

In una dimostrazione di arroganza senza precedenti, nell'ultimo decennio la politica tedesca ha lasciato il suo Stato sociale completamente esposto alla povertà causata dall'immigrazione, cosa che ha generato non solo disordini fiscali, ma anche culturali ed economici. A ciò si aggiungono l'invecchiamento della popolazione e una crisi economica autoinflitta. Tutti i segnali nel sistema di welfare ora puntano verso il disastro.

Alla fine di quest'anno si prevede un deficit complessivo di oltre €55 miliardi, in particolare per l'assicurazione sanitaria pubblica che farà registrare un deficit record di quasi €47 miliardi. L'assicurazione per l'assistenza a lungo termine aggiunge ulteriori €1,6 miliardi di perdite e il fondo pensione si troverà ad affrontare un deficit di circa €7 miliardi.

Un tempo pubblicizzato come un sistema “adatto alle generazioni future”, il modello di welfare tedesco si è trasformato in un pozzo senza fondo. Salvataggi federali, prestiti di emergenza e contributi sempre più elevati caratterizzano ora uno Stato sociale che sta entrando nella fase iniziale del suo collasso.

Vae victis  – guai ai vinti – e benedetti coloro che hanno previsto questa discesa e hanno avuto i mezzi per sfuggire alla trappola dello Stato sociale. Il conto ora viene pagato dalla forza lavoro che soffre silenziosamente – gli eroi che assorbono le conseguenze delle linee di politica debitorie sconsiderate attraverso il loro lavoro e il tempo perso.

Oggi la politica sociale è principalmente un'officina per riparare i danni causati dall'interventismo politico. Nel tentativo di fondere un collante sociale artificiale nella società, la quota di PIL dello stato è salita al 50%. Nonostante i massicci aumenti delle tasse – si pensi alle imposte sulle emissioni di CO2, ai pedaggi stradali, alle imposte sulla proprietà e alla progressione a freddo – il divario tra spesa pubblica ed entrate fiscali effettive continua ad aumentare.

Rispetto al periodo precedente al lockdown, la spesa pubblica è aumentata di circa un terzo, mentre le entrate fiscali reali sono aumentate solo del 14%. Anche un analfabeta in economia dedurrebbe che questo squilibrio richiede una correzione strutturale urgente.

Il bivio più avanti

Ma a Berlino non c'è alcun segno di arretramento. La competizione politica tra i partiti statalisti, tra cui la CDU, produce un solo risultato: bilanci sociali più consistenti, infinite promesse di sussidi e una maggiore ingerenza nell'economia.

Con una fedeltà dogmatica nella politica climatica e nell'ideologia delle frontiere aperte, lo stato tedesco procede ciecamente verso un bivio. Le crisi di bilancio non possono essere programmate: si verificano quando gli stati perdono la capacità di indebitarsi sui mercati dei capitali. Come disse una volta Hemingway a proposito della bancarotta: “Prima lentamente, poi improvvisamente”.

Una volta giunto tal momento – quando i mercati obbligazionari dicono di no – una società si trova di fronte a due strade: lo statalismo totale, o il liberismo economico radicale. Nel primo caso sia i mercati dell'energia che quelli dei capitali cadono sotto il controllo statale, mentre la gestione economica diventa autoritaria. Questa è la strada che sta attualmente percorrendo la Germania.

L'alternativa è quella scelta dall'Argentina sotto la presidenza di Javier Milei, simboleggiata dalla sua ormai famosa motosega. Quella strada riporta a una civiltà basata su uno stato minimo, limitato alla tutela della sicurezza interna ed esterna.

L'Europa come laboratorio

Che ci piaccia o no, siamo tutti parte di un vasto esperimento sociale. La domanda è: l'Europa riuscirà a liberarsi del suo socialismo degenerativo – un'ideologia che ha inflitto tanti danni al continente e al mondo – o ricadremo in schemi infantili, rifiutando le riforme per paura e sentimentalismo?

Il dibattito sul bilancio e la paralisi politica della Francia offrono un'anteprima del nostro futuro. La quota di partecipazione statale francese è salita al 57%. Le sue politiche di apertura delle frontiere sono fallite. Il suo Stato sociale smisurato ha reso il Paese ingovernabile.

Tutto ciò culmina in uno stato permanente di crisi di governo, che si traduce in un crollo della fiducia pubblica. La volatilità economica, a lungo repressa dallo Stato sociale, sta ora esplodendo sotto forma di disordini sociali nelle strade.

[*] traduzione di Francesco Simoncelli: https://www.francescosimoncelli.com/

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There is a dangerous view that threatens to derail the anti-woke movement. According to many people, unfortunately including some “libertarians,” the trouble with Woke programs is that they are untrue to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That law was intended to ban discrimination against people because of their race. You couldn’t refuse to hire someone, or rent an apartment to hm, because, say, you don’t like black people. The law said we should be “colorblind” and treat everybody the same. But now, these people say, the woke movement requires people to give special treatment to people because of their race. If you own a business, for example, you must hire a certain number of blacks, even if they aren’t qualified for the job. It’s also perfectly all right to discriminate against white people. The solution, they say, is to return to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Murray Rothbard held a completely different view and, as always, he is our best guide on all political questions. In his opinion, employment, renting an apartment, etc. rests on the voluntary nature of the transaction. If an employer offers you a job, and you accept his offer, that’s all you need. If you are an employer who doesn’t like black people, you are perfectly free to refuse to offer him a job, in exactly the same way in which a black person can refuse to accept a job offer.

Rothbard saw the Civil Rights Act as a violation of the fundamental principle of freedom of contract. “On the entire question of legally and judicially imposed ‘civil rights,’ we have been subjected to a trap, to a shell game in which ‘both sides’ adopt the same pernicious axiom and simply quarrel about interpretation within the same framework. On the one side, left-liberalism, which in the name of equality and civil rights, wants to outlaw ‘discrimination’ everywhere, has pushed the process to the point of virtually mandating representational quotas for allegedly oppressed groups everywhere in the society; be it jobs and promotions, entry into private golf clubs, or in legislatures and among the judiciary But the Official Conservative opposition, which includes not only neocons but also regular conservatives, conservative legal foundations, and left-libertarians, adopts the self-same axiom of civil rights and equality. In the name of the alleged ‘original’ civil rights vision of Martin Luther King, conservatives also want to outlaw discrimination in jobs and housing, and to allow federal courts to mandate gerrymandering of electoral districts.”

A good recent example of what Rothbard is talking about is the recent effort of the Trump administration and MAGA supporters to use charges of “discrimination” to force universities to institute programs to combat anti-Semitism. According to the New York Times, “Columbia University will pay a $200 million fine to settle allegations from the Trump administration that it failed to do enough to stop the harassment of Jewish students, part of a sweeping deal reached on Wednesday to restore the university’s federal research funding, according to a statement from the university. In exchange for the return of hundreds of millions in research grants, Columbia will also pledge to follow laws banning the consideration of race in admissions and hiring and follow through on other commitments to reduce antisemitism and unrest on campus that it agreed to in March. The deal, which settles more than a half-dozen open civil rights investigations into the university, will be overseen by an independent monitor agreed to by both sides who will report to the government on its progress every six months. Columbia will also pay $21 million to settle investigations brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.”

Let’s continue with Rothbard’s analysis. “But while Official Conservatives fully endorse outlawing racial and other discrimination, they want to stop there and claim that going beyond that to mandating affirmative action measures and quotas is perverting the noble original civil rights ideal. rest of the civil rights movement have tragically gone beyond that doctrine and come ‘precariously close to approving quotas.’ The original sin of ‘civil rights,’ which would have been perfectly understood by such ‘old conservatives’ as the much maligned Nine  Old Men [of the Supreme Court] who tried to block the measures of the New Deal, is that anti-discrimination laws or edicts of any sort are evil because they run roughshod over the only fundamental natural right: the right of everyone over his own property. Every property owner should have the absolute right to sell, hire, or lease his money or other property to anyone whom he chooses, which means he has the absolute right to ‘discriminate’ all he damn pleases. If I have a plant and want to hire only six-foot albinos, and I can find willing employees, I should have the right to do so, even though I might well lose my shirt doing so. (Of course, I should not have the right to force the taxpayers to bail me out after losing my shirt.) If I own an apartment complex and want to rent only to Swedes without children, I should have the right to do so. etc. Outlawing such discrimination, and restrictive covenants upholding it, was the original sin from which all other problems have flowed. Once admit that principle, and everything else follows as the night the day: Once concede that it is right to make it illegal for me to refuse to hire blacks (or substitute any other group, ethnic or gender or whatever you wish), then left-liberalism is far more logical than official conservatism. For if it is right and proper to outlaw my discriminating against blacks, then it is just as right and proper for the government to figure out if I am discriminating or not, and in that case, it is perfectly legitimate for them to employ quotas to test the proposition.”

As you would expect, Rothbard was even more radical in his challenging the orthodoxies of the Left, mostly definitely including  so-called “left -libertarians.” They said that private businesses should be free to discriminate, but that the government should not be. Rothbard rejected this too.  “To return to the fallacies of Left-Libertarianism: apart from the question of what to do with government facilities, left-libertarians are being grossly unrealistic by saying that anti-discrimination laws should only apply to strictly government operations, while private operations must be totally free. The problem is that, particularly in our State-ridden society, the line between ‘public ‘and ‘private’ has grown increasingly fuzzy, and it is precisely because of that fuzziness that left-liberalism has been able to expand very easily)!, and with virtually no opposition, the original application of civil rights from public to all sorts of private facilities. Everywhere, for example, and in front of or next to every private property; there are public streets and roads. Virtually every private business sells some service or produce to some government agency; every private business sells across state lines and is therefore subject to the ‘commerce clause’ of the Constitution; every private school or cultural institution receives, directly or indirectly, government funds; restaurants are somehow invested with a ‘public’ nature because they have doors open to the public; social clubs are not really ‘private’ correctness in high theory; are left totally irrelevant to the current social scene. So what is the remedy for all this? Certainly not to take the standard libertarian path: to endorse civil rights for public operations and then, if they are interested at all in the real world, to try to sort out precisely what is private and what is public nowadays. The result is that there is nothing ‘private’ left, and left-libertarians, as usual content with correctness in high theory; are left totally irrelevant to the current social scene. What has to be done is to repudiate ‘civil rights’ and anti-discrimination laws totally; and in the meanwhile, on a separate but parallel track, try to privatize as much and as fully as we can.”

Let’s do everything we can to get rid of the phony “civil rights” laws of the 1960s!

The post Rothbard on ‘Civil Rights’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Netanyahu has confirmed reports that Israel plans an extreme escalation in Gaza which will entail the total military occupation of the entire enclave and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, which the Israeli spin machine has termed “voluntary migration”.

To be clear, anyone who says the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza would be “voluntary” is lying. Starving a population and deliberately making their land uninhabitable is exactly the same as forcing them out at gunpoint. Saying “leave or you’ll starve” is not meaningfully different from saying “leave or I’ll shoot you in the head”. Israel’s planned mass expulsion will be as forced and involuntary as any in recorded history.

President Trump has fully signed off on this move, washing his hands of the mass atrocity he is cosigning by telling the press that it’s going to be “pretty much up to Israel.”

Trump is lying. It’s up to him. That’s why more than 600 former senior Israeli security officials from Mossad and Shin Bet just sent Trump a letter urging him to compel Netanyahu to make peace in Gaza. They understand that the US president has always had the power to end the Gaza holocaust; numerous Israeli insiders have said that this mass atrocity would not be possible without US assistance.

Trump could end all this at any time, and chooses not to. This makes him one of the most evil people in the world.

Source X

This whole genocide is powered by lies. Netanyahu just told Fox News that the horrifying aerial footage of the destruction in Gaza that we’ve been seeing is because every single building in Gaza was booby trapped with explosives by Hamas.

“The reason you see the flattened buildings is because Hamas booby traps every single building,” Netanyahu said. “So when we come in, we first have the population moved even though Hamas tries to keep them in the combat zones. But after they move, and we start to move into the neighborhoods that are now populated only by terrorists, they ignite these booby traps. So what we do is we put in an APC, an armored personnel carrier, with a lot of explosives. Detonate it. It sets off all the booby traps and the buildings begin to collapse as a result of that. They’re empty buildings, they’re not populated buildings.”

Absolutely nobody believes this is true. Not one single person alive on this earth sincerely believes that Gaza now looks like a gravel parking lot because Hamas placed explosives inside every single building. Netanyahu doesn’t believe it. Israel’s most venomous supporters don’t believe it. It’s just part of the nonstop fountain of lies they are spewing to avoid acknowledging what we all know we’re looking at. They’ve told so many lies by now that they’ve got to keep lying and lying just to stay afloat, like a man desperately treading water to avoid drowning.

This genocide is one nonstop insult to our intelligence. It’s actually degrading at this point. The lies Israel and its supporters have to pretend to believe are getting so ridiculous that supporting Israel is now an act of public humiliation and self-debasement.

Source X

Former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett has a long rant on his social media accounts complaining that Israel’s “status in the United States is collapsing”, including among Republicans, with public sentiment turning against them because of what is happening in Gaza.

As you might expect, Bennett does not frame this as a sign that Israel should stop committing genocide in Gaza, but rather complains of a crisis of “antisemitism” in the United States, and accuses Netanyahu of failing to adequately propagandize Americans.

“Jews in the United States are subject to a torrential wave of anti-Semitism, like him I don’t remember in my life,” Bennett moans, adding, “Antisemites increase to compare the ‘hunger’ in Gaza to the Holocaust, and thus reduce the memory of the Holocaust. They act that the hunger accusation will haunt israel its citizens, our soldiers, for generations.”

“If Netanyahu’s propaganda men worked against the enemies of Israel *outside* a tenth of the talent, speed and dedication with which they operate the propaganda machine against their political rivals *inside* israel our situation would be amazing,” Bennet writes, saying he wants to “re-establish a rapid and synchronized explanation headquarters”.

“Explanation” is the literal translation of the Hebrew word “hasbara”, i.e. pro-Israel propaganda.

Source X

Meanwhile the term “hasbara” itself is reportedly being abandoned by the Israeli Foreign Ministry, as westerners have come to associate the term with genocide propaganda.

The Times of Israel reports:

“Long referred to as hasbara, a term used to denote both public relations and propaganda that has been freighted with negative baggage in recent years, the ministry now brands its approach as toda’a — which translates to ‘awareness’ or ‘consciousness’ — an apparent shift toward broader, more proactive messaging.”

So they’re not abandoning the genocide, and they’re not abandoning the genocide propaganda, they’re just abandoning the word for the genocide propaganda because people have come to associate that word with propaganda in support of genocide.

The entire Zionist project is built on a foundation of lies. And their lies are starting to catch up with them. They’re now at a point where the lies are beginning to damage the public image they’re intended to protect.

When a liar is recognized as a liar, his lies will forevermore work only as an antidote to his past lies, and as a light to further expose his intent. From that point on any lie he tells just shows people how ugly his character and intentions really are.

There is no other weapon that works that way. No other weapon which when it’s seen immediately stops working, actively disarms the attacker, starts fixing what he broke, and starts attacking him.

Truth will win in the end.

________________

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The post Israel Is Beginning To Choke on Its Own Lies appeared first on LewRockwell.

Spending and regulating are simple to limit. Enough government people just need to support and protect the Constitution by limiting themselves and other government people to within constitutional boundaries.

Congressmen have the most power, so spending and regulating are simplest for congressmen to limit:

• First, a lower overall-total appropriation can be passed in both houses by simple majorities. Senate filibuster/cloture must never be respected. It unconstitutionally gives more weight to minority votes more than to majority votes, violating the explicit one person, one vote rule in the Constitution; and the Constitution overrides house rules. If the appropriation passes but the president vetoes, the veto can be overridden by two-thirds majorities.
• Second, the same majorities can mostly just pass commonsense repeals. Repeals can get changes underway in healthcare, pensions, defense, interest, and welfare. Repeals can end national-government control of education and transportation, and can end regulation.

The table shows how much spending and regulating can be limited from year one on, once congressmen start supporting constitutional boundaries.

Data: usgovernmentspending.com, Ten Thousand Commandments, 2025 Edition

Healthcare and pensions can initially have their spending unchanged, but have their rules changed so that customers and producers can start developing higher-quality, more cost-effective products, which will reduce spending in future years. Defense, interest, welfare, education, transportation, and regulation compliance can initially be reduced by already-substantial percentages that are practical starting points. Welfare and transportation can initially be added back into state-government budgets.

Even with only these changes, spending plus regulation compliance would be reduced in the first year by a sizable down payment of 41%.

These changes will create new political winners who will hold in place all of these improvements and more. Fast, extensive change always ends up best for freedom.

Constitution-defying Progressive government is complex. Majorities of congressmen and all presidents enact imposing statutory frameworks. All presidents enact an order of magnitude more laws, calling them regulations, and then enact still more laws, calling them guidance and other euphemisms. Majorities of judges opine in favor of essentially all of this.

In contrast, Constitution-supporting government is simple. Government people just need to be limited to better-securing people’s life, liberty, and property. Producers and customers then freely experiment and rapidly work out voluntary arrangements that add value optimally.

Healthcare (0% change in year one)

Congressmen should regularize healthcare products by passing healthcare-product descriptions that are customer-friendly, and by requiring producers to list their pricing or be punished with stiff fines and lawsuits. This will let customers compare base products and also additional products they might need if they experience complications.

Beyond this, congressmen should simply repeal national statutes and outlaw state statutes that interfere with healthcare producers and customers.

Pensions (0%)

Congressmen should formally repeal requirements to pay more money into Social Security. They should leave in place the benefits that past congressmen have promised up to now. They should formally support selling government-held assets to help pay for grandfathering-out these unconstitutional entitlements.

They should let a person retire as young or as old as he chooses and receive lifetime payments that are projected to have the same present value—the same actuarial adjustment they make now when people retire a little younger or older.

Defense (-50%)

Congressmen should formally repeal all defense treaties and authorizations for use of military force. They should pass or vote down declarations of war. They should pass rules-of-engagement cards.

They should formally repeal legislative grabs of executive power over organizational structures, positions, basing, and line-item funding.

They should formally repeal all infringements of the right to keep and bear arms, and they should formally outlaw all state-government infringements.

Interest (-90%)

Congressmen are explicitly required to not pay any debt or obligation incurred in rebellion against the USA people and Constitution—and Progressive government is rebellion.

They should immediately opine that presidents should repay the national debt held by USA retirees, who have been ill-advised by financial professionals and who could no longer recover from undue deprivations of property. They should immediately opine that the president should repudiate the rest of the national debt by immediately freezing all the debt, a month later repudiating interest except for USA retirees, and a month after that repudiating principal except for USA retirees.

Welfare, Education, Transportation, and Regulation (-100%)

The existing statutes are unconstitutional takings of private property for public use without just compensation, exercises of unenumerated powers, or delegations of legislative power. Congressmen should formally repeal the existing statutes and appropriations.

The Constitution’s rules are not only law but also best practice. What has worked best has been voluntary charity, government-free schooling, local ownership, and regulation by producers and customers. Limiting governments in these areas in the past freed the USA people to grow to lead the world.

A congressman’s got to know his limitations.

Nowadays, congressmen change the subject away from their current actions by focusing attention on ten-year budgets.

These call to mind Communists’ five-year plans, but these plans are worse. Congressmen project these plans out twice as far. Each year, they violate the previous plan and roll out a new plan. And shielded behind this ten-year wizards’ curtain, each year congressmen logroll the budget numbers for the next year—the only numbers that count. Aided by this subterfuge, Progressive congressmen and presidents have lately been sticking the people with another great inflation that will turn into another great depression.

Congressmen need to instead only set an overall-total appropriation, and then do their main job: pass bills that consist solely of constitutional rules and sanctions.

If any congressmen genuinely represent the people, the optimal path was already set for them long ago in the Constitution. Congressmen can hold themselves and their colleagues to within their constitutional boundaries. Or every last one who won’t, the people can replace with another who will.

The post Boundaries on Spending and Regulating appeared first on LewRockwell.

This year marks the 500th anniversary of the birth of Palestrina, the great composer of sacred polyphony, whose masterful compositions for the sacred liturgy have been described by Catholic musicologist Susan Treacy as “a cathedral in music.” Palestrina was so much the musical voice of the Catholic Reformation in the sixteenth century that he is rightly revered as one of the most important composers of all time.

He is buried at St. John Lateran Cathedral, one of the four major basilicas of Rome, the inscription on his tomb lauding him as the “Prince of Sacred Music”, and he was described by the great composer Felix Mendelsohn as one of the West’s four musical tetrarchs—alongside Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart. Clearly, Palestrina’s praises have been widely sung, and rightly so, placing him beyond the realm of the unsung heroes celebrated in this series. The same can be said of other great composers of sacred polyphony, such as Thomas Tallis and William Byrd.

Leaving these giants aside, we will focus instead on some of the great composers from the history of Christendom who are not as well-known or as widely lauded.

Guido of Arezzo, an eleventh century Benedictine monk, is well-known to professional musicologists but is largely unknown outside of the ivory towers of academe. This is unjust because he is responsible for the language that all musicians use. A music theorist and teacher, his seminal work, Micrologus, was the most influential musical treatise of the middle ages with the exception of Boethius’ De institutione musica. He is widely acknowledged as the inventor of the modern staff notation which was foundational to the development of Western musical notation.

Moving forward three hundred years to the high middle ages, the French composer Guillaume de Machaut composed the first polyphonic setting of the Mass. His Messe de Nostre Dame (Mass of Our Lady) is, therefore, a pioneering work which paved the way for Palestrina and others. A century later, in the fifteenth century, another French pioneer, Guillaume Du Fay, would emerge as the most illustrious musician of his time. A composer of both sacred and secular music, he would be described by his contemporary Piero de’ Medici as “the greatest ornament of our age.” Another composer of the fifteenth and sixteenth century whose praises were widely sung in his own day but who is largely unsung today is Josquin Des Prez. The composer of several settings of the Mass, his most celebrated work is probably the four-voice motet, Ave Maria … Virgo serena. Such was his importance that Susan Treacy has suggested that he might be considered “a Renaissance Beethoven.”

We will move now to an altogether different type of unsung composer, Antonín Dvořák. Whereas some heroes of Christendom are unsung because they have never been widely known or were once widely known but are now largely forgotten or neglected, Dvořák remains one of the most celebrated and famous of all classical composers whose praises are sung wherever great music is loved. He is unsung, however, because his role as a great composer of classical music has eclipsed his great Catholic faith and the influence that this faith had on his work. In this sense, he is unsung in the same sense that Shakespeare is unsung.

Take, for instance, the way that Dvořák’s importance is encapsulated in the opening sentence of his entry on Wikipedia:

Antonín Leopold Dvořák (8 September 1841 – 1 May 1904) was a Czech composer. He frequently employed rhythms and other aspects of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia, following the Romantic-era nationalist example of his predecessor Bedřich Smetana. Dvořák’s style has been described as “the fullest recreation of a national idiom with that of the symphonic tradition, absorbing folk influences and finding effective ways of using them,” and Dvořák has been described as “arguably the most versatile… composer of his time.”

Thus, in summarizing the salient features of Dvořák’s legacy, we are told of his nationality, and are informed of the influence of folklore and nationalism, and of his Romanticism and versatility, but we are not told of his deep Catholic faith, nor its role in his work, nor its being the inspiration for his great sacred compositions.

Dvořák is best known for his Symphony Number 9 in E minor, popularly known by its subtitle From the New World or simply as the New World Symphony. Such is its enduring popularity that it was selected to be taken by Neil Armstrong to the moon during the first lunar landing in 1969 and was voted the favourite symphony in a poll conducted by ABC Classic FM radio in Australia in 2009. This is all very well and all very good but this is not what makes Antonín Dvořák an unsung hero of Christendom. What qualifies him for such an accolade and for his inclusion in this series are his many sacred choral works. His setting of the Stabat Mater is the longest extant setting of that text, running to around 90 minutes, and he also composed a Requiem, a Mass in D major and a setting of the Te Deum.

The premiere of Dvořák’s Requiem in Birmingham (England) in 1891 was conducted by the composer himself, and was “very successful.” Such success was repeated the following year during a performance in Boston in which “the composer was frequently applauded between numbers and given a most enthusiastic ovation at the end.” A later performance in Vienna was described as “a triumph of Dvořák’s music.”

The Te Deum, composed in 1892, was dedicated to the 400th anniversary of the discovery of America, and his Mass in D major, originally intended for organ, solo voices and a small choir, was subsequently arranged for a full symphony orchestra. The oratorio Saint Ludmila tells the story of the Bohemian saint and martyr, combining in its subject matter Dvořák’s patriotism and his deep Catholic faith.

With respect to the latter, he was a lifelong and devoutly practicing Catholic. He and his wife had nine children. There is little doubt that Dvořák’s New World Symphony will be performed across the United States as part of next year’s celebrations to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Perhaps we might hope and pray that the Te Deum that he composed to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the discovery of the New World might be performed with it. There can be few better ways of reminding ourselves that the United States is not merely a New World nation but that it is also and must always be One Nation under God.

This article was originally published on Crisis Magazine.

The post Great Unsung Composers of Christendom appeared first on LewRockwell.

U.S. power has become increasingly redundant and indeed something to repudiate.

President Donald Trump’s estimation of American power, like that of his own abilities, is increasingly seen to be badly overblown. This week, he threatened some 90 nations with tough trade penalties in the form of double-digit tariffs on their exports to the United States. It remains to be seen if he will actually implement the measures. Trump already cancelled a plan to impose worldwide tariffs back in April – his so-called Liberation Day – after no doubt realizing, or his more informed advisors realizing, that the U.S. cannot win a global trade war.

If there’s one thing about Trump, it is that he is as quick to reverse threats as he is to issue them. The erratic behavior speaks of the muddled thinking and lack of coherent analysis in his so-called policies. Trump’s reversals also speak of the limits to U.S. power as the world shifts to different realities in geopolitics and geoeconomics. The American power that Trump thinks exists is no longer.

This disconnect was evinced this week as Trump threatened tariffs on Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The so-called secondary levies were supposed to be related to Trump’s deadline for Russia to reach a peace deal with Ukraine. Countries buying Russian oil are “fueling the war machine,” he claimed. India hit back at what it called ridiculous hypocrisy, pointing out that the European Union purchased more Russian oil last year than India. The U.S. also buys billions of dollars-worth of Russian agricultural fertilizer, uranium, and other minerals.

In any case, the four countries targeted by Trump for secondary tariffs firmly rebuffed his threats. They dismissed Trump’s intimidation and vowed to continue exercising their sovereign right to do business as they deem necessary for their national interests.

It is not clear what the White House will do next in the aftermath of such defiance. Trump’s habit of extending deadlines for tariffs may postpone action.

The surprise announcement that Russian President Vladimir Putin is to meet Trump in person sometime next week, reportedly in Alaska, may also persuade the American side to drop the secondary tariffs plan. Trump’s egotistical craving to be seen as a peacemaker in Ukraine is such that a summit with Putin may be enough to appease his desire for headlines and a shot at winning the Nobel Peace Prize. His overblown claims about mediating peace between India and Pakistan, Azerbaijan and Armenia, and between Israel and Hamas show him to be driven by superficial success.

The defiance of the BRICS nations this week in the face of Trump’s bullying was remarkable for several reasons. It demonstrated that the BRICS are emerging as a powerful, cohesive economic and geopolitical force. After 16 years since the international organization’s founding, its leverage is no longer abstract or theoretical. It’s becoming a concrete reality.

Brazil’s President Lula da Silva mockingly stated that Trump was “not the emperor of the world,” and he called for a special BRICS summit to galvanize a joint response to U.S. trade threats. China condemned Washington’s bullying and said that the unilateral imposition of tariffs was a violation of the United Nations Charter. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi sent his top national security adviser to meet with Putin in the Kremlin. It was also reported this week that Modi is to travel to China later this month to attend the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. These developments suggest that the BRICS are solidifying their commitment to advancing a multilateral global order in response to Trump’s belligerence.

As with so much of Trump’s capricious conduct and attitude, he is rallying international forces that are hastening the demise of American standing and power, ironically for a president who boasts about “making America great again.” An article by renowned international economist Michael Hudson illustrates how ill-conceived Trump’s trade war with the planet is. Hudson contends that the tariffs will fuel consumer inflation in the U.S. as Americans pay more for expensive imports. Republican Senator Rand Paul agrees with this assessment. He claims that the tariffs will add $2 trillion in taxes on U.S. consumers.

Another impact that Team Trump seems unaware of is that the world economy is sufficiently diversified that countries will be able to find alternative markets for their exports. That will result in more countries being less dependent on the dollar for trade settlements, which, in turn, will weaken the greenback and the U.S.’s ability to keep piling up its astronomical national debt. The system is, therefore, liable to crash the more Trump imposes trade penalties on other nations.

It is also becoming clear that the BRICS represent a historic challenge to the U.S.-led Western order. The more Trump tries to undermine the emerging multipolar order, the more strongly it emerges. Earlier this year, Trump claimed that the BRICS were dead after he threatened to impose 100 percent tariffs on what he labelled an anti-American bloc. His rumors of BRICS’ death are greatly exaggerated. The international forum keeps steadily growing, gaining a significant new member, Indonesia, this year – the fourth most populous country in the world. BRICS represent over 50 percent of the world’s GDP and about 40 percent of its population. It has surpassed the Western-dominated G7 group in terms of economic power.

Trump’s tariff tantrums have little to do with bringing peace to Ukraine and a lot more to do with trying to break up the BRICS, which is a growing challenge to U.S. hegemony. This week shows that the BRICS have acquired a new sense of their own confidence and purpose in creating an alternative to the U.S.-dominated system. Trump’s arrogance and lack of understanding of the new realities of the global economy and the world’s resolve for long-overdue justice and peace, particularly for the Global South, are precipitating the demise of the U.S.-run neocolonialist order.

Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, among many other nations, are showing a resilience and defiance to U.S. imperialist bullying that would have been thought unlikely only a few years ago. Their commitment to mutual development and a fairer world order is making the U.S.-dominated elite Western capitalist system less relevant and less viable. The enormous trade deficits that the U.S. has accumulated over decades, in line with its monstrous national debt of $37 trillion, mean that it needs the rest of the world to keep its essentially parasitic position intact. The integration of the multipolar global economy under the leadership of the BRICS is showing that U.S. power has become increasingly redundant and indeed something to repudiate. It is hitting a wall of solid BRICS.

On the ominous side, however, that is why the U.S. rulers are becoming so insanely warmongering. Will they try to blow up a dead-end?

The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.

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Friedrich von Hayek considered the rule of law to be essential in minimizing coercion and enhancing individual liberty. In this context, he regarded “equality before the law” (formal equality) as essential to the rule of law. However, he emphasized that formal equality is the only concept of equality that is compatible with the rule of law. He criticized socialist and progressive attempts to theorize further notions of equality, which they package as “social justice,” as disguised attacks on liberty. In the Constitution of Liberty, he explains,

Equality of the general rules of law and conduct, however, is the only kind of equality conducive to liberty and the only equality which we can secure without destroying liberty. Not only has liberty nothing to do with any other sort of equality, but it is even bound to produce inequality in many respects. This is the necessary result and part of the justification of individual liberty: if the result of individual liberty did not demonstrate that some manners of living are more successful than others, much of the case for it would vanish.

Like Ludwig von Mises, Hayek defended liberty on the basis that individual liberty is essential to Western civilization—he described it as “that ideal of freedom which inspired modern Western civilization and whose partial realization made possible the achievements of that civilization.” It would make no sense for anyone who values this civilization to undermine the very liberty that enables it to flourish. Attempting to eradicate inequality, while purporting to value the conditions that gave rise to that inequality, would be contradictory.

To Hayek, formal equality is not based on the essential equality of human beings, but on the ideal of liberty. He cautioned that,

[W]e must not overlook the fact that individuals are very different from the outset.… As a statement of fact, it just is not true that “all men are born equal.”

Formal equality is not based on the premise that people are equal—it is precisely because people are not equal that the law assures them of the equal protection conferred by the rule of law. The law assures us that rich or poor, tall or short, black or white, we are all subject to the same rules. As Hayek puts it, formal equality

…not only recognizes that individuals are very different but in a great measure rests on that assumption. It insists that these individual differences provide no justification for government to treat them differently.

Under the rule of law, people’s innate differences are deemed to be irrelevant, hence the classical reference to “blind justice.” The point of blind justice is not that differences do not exist, but that the law takes no account of them. Thus, Hayek emphasizes that equality before the law neither “assumes that people are in fact equal [nor] attempts to make them equal.” He adds,

Nothing, however, is more damaging to the demand for equal treatment than to base it on so obviously untrue an assumption as that of the factual equality of all men. To rest the case for equal treatment of national or racial minorities on the assertion that they do not differ from other men is implicitly to admit that factual inequality would justify unequal treatment; and the proof that some differences do, in fact, exist would not be long in forthcoming. It is of the essence of the demand for equality before the law that people should be treated alike in spite of the fact that they are different.

In other words, arguing that people are treated equally because they are in fact equal, would imply that if they were not in fact equal, then they need not be treated equally. Yet the whole point of the rule of law is to govern everyone by the same general rules despite their individual differences. It follows that the rule of law is not evaluated by reference to whether people are in fact equal, but by ensuring that the rules apply to all in the same way. State power is limited by the requirement that it must treat all citizens the same. It would make no sense to say that the way for the state to treat all citizens the same would be to treat people differently so that they all end up the same. This is the essential flaw in critical legal theories that expect all groups of people to end up “equal” following the eradication of all attainment gaps.

Hayek’s defense of the rule of law is in large part addressed to those who may not share his own moral preference for liberty—hence, he appeals to reason and rationality by highlighting the role of liberty in enabling society to flourish. He does not think much of the natural law, or the concept of free will, as justifications for liberty, observing that, “It appears that the assertion that the will is free has as little meaning as its denial and that the whole issue is a phantom problem, a dispute about words in which the contestants have not made clear what an affirmative or negative answer would imply.” Nor does he see anything “natural” about property rights, observing that it is not clear “What exactly is to be included in that bundle of rights that we call ‘property,’… There is nothing ‘natural’ in any particular definition of rights of this kind.”

Instead, like Mises, he emphasizes the fact that very few people could credibly claim to value equality so highly that they are prepared to give up liberty and destroy civilization in order to achieve a more equal society. In most cases, people who claim to want a tradeoff between equality and liberty simply hope and expect that they can reconcile the contradictions pointed out by Hayek. They suppose that they would be quite happy to have a little less liberty if that would yield a little more equality. But Hayek shows this expectation to be woefully misguided. He rejects all “social justice” demands, not only because the knowledge problems he highlights would make it impossible to achieve the expected tradeoffs, but more importantly because his aim is to maximize liberty by minimizing coercion. Any attempt to equalize people would go against that, and would in fact be “the opposite of freedom.” Liberty cannot be enhanced by destroying it.

Liberty is bound to produce inequality because people are essentially different. For example, if an athlete who trains harder than others is more likely to win the race, those intent on equalizing the performance of all runners must ensure that no one is at liberty to train harder than others, and that those who need catching up get special help with their training. Hayek explains, “the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently.” This is the premise underlying schemes like affirmative action and diversity, equality, and inclusiveness—to treat people differently in order to equalize their position, which Hayek refers to as “material equality.” Thus, Hayek explains:

Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either the one or the other, but not both at the same time. The equality before the law which freedom requires leads to material inequality.

Unlike Mises and Rothbard, Hayek accepts a role for “taxation and the various compulsory services, especially in the armed forces,” within the rule of law. He argues that although these are coercive, they are mitigated by being “predictable” and “as independent of the will of another person as men have learned to be in society.” He also accepts that state interventions may be required to protect individuals from the coercion of others. But Hayek does not accept that state coercion is ever necessary to make people equal: “the desire of making people more alike in their condition cannot be accepted in a free society as a justification for further and discriminatory coercion.” In his view, the desire for equalization is driven by mere envy, “the discontent that the success of some people often produces in those that are less successful.” The state has no role to play in promoting the destructive vice of envy.

As readers will know, Rothbard criticized some of the key aspects of Hayek’s philosophy of liberty, in particular his “compromising and untenable positions” in relation to taxation, conscription, and other state interventions as well as Hayek’s “brusque and cavalier dismissal of the whole theory of natural law.” As concerns the rejection of material equality, Rothbard was not convinced that socialist demands for “social justice” could be answered by dismissing it as meaningless and declaring its proponents to be merely envious of others. It may sometimes be the case that people genuinely regard inequality as unjust, not because they are envious but because they genuinely (albeit, as Rothbard shows, wrongly) believe in Marxist theories of class conflict and exploitation of the poor. In Rothbard’s view, a theory of justice is therefore needed to respond to claims that inequality is unjust, and he argues that such a theory is best grounded in the natural law principles of self-ownership and private property.

Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.

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For ages, if there was a way to subvert the law for electoral advantage, the Democrats would do it, but under new leadership Republicans are fighting back. If you accurately read the Democrats’ nonsense about “saving our democracy” as a plaint about saving their party, you wouldn’t be wrong. Just as these domestic outrages are being undone, the President has brokered a series of seven international peace agreements and is negotiating for an eighth (between Russia and Ukraine) this week in Alaska. He’s rightfully thrown up his arms at a Gaza deal because psychopathic Hamas is utterly irrational, but has made astonishing progress with 22 Arab nations who now distance themselves from Gaza. (It remains to be seen how the gormless Norwegians who gave Obama a Nobel Peace Prize for no reason at all will avoid awarding it to the man who rightfully deserves it.)

There’s nothing new about census taking. In the Bible the Lord commanded Moses to take one of those who had joined him on the exodus out of Egypt. In the United States seats in the House of Representatives and the allocation of trillions of dollars in federal assistance are based on census data. As the Project on Government Oversight informs us:

The federal government relies heavily on the data in several important ways. It allocates seats in the House of Representatives based on the decennial census results. It also uses the data to help direct trillions of dollars in federal assistance to states and communities. Those funds are used for hospitals, roads, schools, housing, supporting veterans, feeding children and families, economic development, and so much more. Agencies use census data for program evaluation and evidence-based policymaking. It is therefore essential to get accurate decennial census counts, yet numerous states had statistically significant errors in their 2020 decennial numbers.

So, if you pad the rolls with illegal aliens, your districts will get greater representation in Congress and more federal money to spend. The last national census was in 2020 and the Post Enumeration Survey revealed it was full of errors in at least 14 states.

Not only did the 2020 census count illegal aliens (like previous counts) — but it was wildly inaccurate — conveniently benefiting Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

In a shocking report that has not received the attention it deserves, the U.S. Census Bureau recently admitted that its 2020 Census count of the American population was incorrect in at least 14 states.

And those mistakes were costly to certain states in terms of congressional representation, number of electors, and money those states are likely to receive from the federal government during the next decade. To put the scope of these mistakes into perspective, contrast the errors in the Census Bureau’s latest recount (the 2020 Post-Enumeration Survey, or PES) with the recount from a decade ago (the 2010 Post-Enumeration Survey) — in which there was a net overcount of a mere 0.01 percent (36,000 people), a statistically insignificant error.

As explained below, as a result of these errors, Florida did not receive two additional congressional seats and Texas did not receive one more congressional seat. Meanwhile, two other states, Minnesota and Rhode Island, each retained a congressional seat that they should have lost, and Colorado gained a new seat to which it was rightfully not entitled.

Traditionally the census is taken every 10 years, but the president has called for one to be done now.

According to White House Deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, the Democrats manipulated the 2020 census to unfairly gain 20-30 congressional seats thanks to lax registration laws which allowed illegal aliens to vote. There’ s no constitutional bar to doing a new census now. The Constitution only mandates that there not be a greater than ten-year-gap between counts.

Read the Whole Article

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Today President Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff had a three hour meeting with President Putin of Russia. There is no announcement yet of the outcome of the talk.

But shortly after the meeting was over President Trump amended this Executive Order:

ADDRESSING THREATS TO THE UNITED STATES BY THE GOVERNMENT OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

I have received additional information from various senior officials on, among other things, the actions of the Government of the Russian Federation with respect to the situation in Ukraine. After considering this additional information, among other things, I find that the national emergency described in Executive Order 14066 continues and that the actions and policies of the Government of the Russian Federation continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.

To deal with the national emergency described in Executive Order 14066, I determine that it is necessary and appropriate to impose an additional ad valorem duty on imports of articles of India, which is directly or indirectly importing Russian Federation oil. In my judgment, imposing tariffs, as described below, in addition to maintaining the other measures taken to address the national emergency described in Executive Order 14066, will more effectively deal with the national emergency described in Executive Order 14066.

Sec. 2. Imposition of Tariffs. (a) I find that the Government of India is currently directly or indirectly importing Russian Federation oil.

(b) Accordingly, and as consistent with applicable law, articles of India imported into the customs territory of the United States shall be subject to an additional ad valorem rate of duty of 25 percent.

How a total 50% tariff on products from India is supposed to counter alleged threats to the United States by the government of Russia is hard to explain.

The increased tariff on India will come into force in 21 days.

India’s President Narneda Modi has not yet commented on it. He will however visit China at the end of this month:

According to the plan, Prime Minister Modi will embark on a visit to Japan around August 29 and after concluding the trip, he will travel to the northern Chinese city of Tianjin for the SCO summit to be held from August 31-September 1.

Modi’s visit to China is being planned amid efforts by the two sides to repair their bilateral ties, which came under severe strain following the deadly clashes between Indian and Chinese troops in Galwan Valley in June 2020.

The grand U.S. plan of luring India deeper into the Quad alliance to fight China is likely dead. The leaders of the two biggest nations on this globe, plus Russia, will sit together and plan how to avoid further dealing with an unstable U.S. of A.

Baring any change the additional tariffs on India will hit U.S. consumers the most. The largest portion of goods coming from India to the U.S. are active pharma ingredients (API) used in generic medicines:

The US is India’s largest destination for pharma exports, accounting for over 31 per cent of the country’s total pharmaceutical exports. As much as 47 per cent of all generics consumed in the US are imported from India.

Imports from India are unlikely to stop. But it will be U.S. consumers who will have to pay the higher prices:

[T]he US will still be dependent on countries like India since the cost of manufacturing certain drugs in the US would be at least six times compared to that of manufacturing the same product in India, say industry sources.

The US market, which relies heavily on India for APIs and low-cost generics, would struggle to find alternatives, according to Namit Joshi, chairman of Pharmexcil (Pharmaceuticals Export Promotion Council of India). “Efforts to shift pharmaceutical manufacturing and API production to other countries or within the US will take at least 3-5 years to establish meaningful capacity,” he was quoted in media reports.

The price increase for medicines will contribute to an already stubborn inflation within the U.S., even while the president tries to bully pharma producers into reducing their prices.

There are other parts of the economy where Trump’s policies collide with themselves.

Wired reports that the number of drill rigs for gas and oil exploration continues to shrink even while Trump loudly promises to ‘Drill, baby drill’:

There is one key indicator of drilling levels that the industry has watched closely for more than 80 years: a weekly census of active oil and gas rigs published by Baker Hughes. When Trump came into office on Janunary 20, the US rig count was 580. Last week, the most recent figure, it was down to 542—hovering just above a four-year low reached earlier in the month.
…
The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas’ quarterly survey of over 130 oil and gas producers based in Texas, Louisiana, and New Mexico, conducted in June, suggests the industry’s outlook is pessimistic. Nearly half of the 38 firms that responded to this question saw their firms drilling fewer wells this year than they had earlier expected.

Survey participants could also submit comments. One executive from an exploration and production (E&P) company said, “It’s hard to imagine how much worse policies and DC rhetoric could have been for US E&P companies.” Another executive said, “The Liberation Day chaos and tariff antics have harmed the domestic energy industry. ‘Drill, baby, drill’ will not happen with this level of volatility.”

Roughly one in three survey respondents chalked up the expectations for fewer wells to higher tariffs on steel imports. And three in four said tariffs raised the cost of drilling and completing new wells.

“They’re getting more places to drill and they’re getting some lower royalties, but they’re also getting these tariffs that they don’t want,” Rapier said. “And the bottom line is their profits are going to suffer.”

Inflation in the U.S. continues to be stubborn and is likely to rise. Unemployment is up while services and manufacturing activities are shrinking. The government is spending excessively.

These are all signs of stagflation which, once it sets in, has proven difficult to defeat.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

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Official position on viruses in the Covid 19 reign of terror

The consulting firms that work for private equity and individual billionaire families, and then feed their demands to private and national intelligence agencies in Washington, Jerusalem, and around the world (as well as other consulting and lobbying entities) have intentionally created hundreds of mutually contradictory narratives explaining Covid 19 (of both the mainstream and conspiracy genres) that are meant to confuse us.

Moreover, there remain a large number of people on the “progressive” side who hold up the Covid 19 pandemic narrative in its original ridiculous form (and do so for payments) and on the “conservative” side who hold up the Wuhan virus gain-of-function virus narrative in its equally ridiculous form (and do so for payments). Both sides are equally corrupt and decadent.

Regarding what actually happened, the role of DARPA and military and intelligence agencies, has been pretty well documented, especially in the work of Sasha Latypova. We still do not have the details of how elites in basically every country in the world were bought off, or threatened, or both, so as to be brought into the promotion of this scam. It seems most likely that the primary movers were private intelligence in the United States and Israel at the start, and that they quickly tried to pin the operation all on China (which was not completely innocent) as part of their scheme—just as they blamed Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan (which were not completely innocent) for 9/11.

Regarding the gain-of-function virus tale, it seems highly unlikely. There has been a lot of research on that topic since the Second World War and it turns out not to be that easy to create super germs, even with advanced DNA technologies.

It is clear, however, that some groups of people in prominent international cities were killed, or made very ill, so as to make the story more convincing. The number of people made ill, or killed, was likely not that large, in the thousands (maybe tens of thousands) and it was the amplification by the media, and by thousands of citizens who took the money to spread such fictions (I have met people who confessed to doing exactly that in Korea) that was critical.

Those who were made very ill, or who were killed, were poisoned, most likely by intelligence teams with extremely levels of high clearance. Which countries those teams reported to really did not matter for multi-billionaires and multinational private equity. Countries are meant for little people, not for the chosen.

If you are falling into a China vs. US narrative of the military origins of a deadly virus, whether Donald Trump on the one side, or Jeffery Sachs on the other, you are either part of the game, or you are being played.

We still do not know what exactly made those people ill. Perhaps it was a virus, but I doubt it. Most likely there were several different poisons employed at different locations to induce the desired illnesses.

We know the contours of what happened already. We should hold off judgment on what exactly killed people until we have conducted an international scientific investigation. That is what we should be demanding now, as well as demanding that the assets of all billionaires, and banks involved be seized.

Such an investigation will most likely not take place, however, until this unprecedented multi-faceted “omniwar” is over. So, we must demand the truth, but we must also be patient.

In any case, the number of people made sick or killed, by these poisons was quite small, and intentionally so. The primary purpose of the Covid 19 operation was to get vast numbers of people conforming with orders for masks, social distancing, and dangerous vaccines while they did not completely believe the narrative they were being fed.

It would have been possible to create a bogus “pandemic” that killed a lot more people. That was not done, and there was a reason for keeping the number actually sick so low.

The goal of the pandemic followed the basic strategy described in Joost A.M. Meerloo’s book The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control, Menticide, and Brainwashing.

The point was to force people to do things they don’t really believe in, that are self-destructive and counterproductive, by using social and cultural pressure. That process serves to destroy self-confidence and sense of awareness in the individual and the community. The individual feels that he or she is guilty for what has been done to him or her because he or she participated willingly—it seems—in the experiment. Thus the individual or the group is incapable of organized resistance to the new totalitarian regime established.

That is why masks and vaccines were so important. The individual had to feel that he or she had chosen to conform of his or her own will and therefore had no right to question anything anymore. That mental manipulation on a massive scale opened the door to menticide (destruction of mental capacity) for everyone, including highly-educated experts. And that situation made it possible for a handful of IT billionaires to seize control of the entire earth.

I want to note, however, that the 9/11 incident, which was just as ridiculous as Covid 19, was the first major step in this operation.

That false flag operation in 2001 permanently disabled critical thinking in a vast number of intellectuals around the world. I would even venture to say that if you had not had 9/11 first, the elites could not have gotten away with Covid 19.

This article was originally published on Fear No Evil.

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I am fairly certain that most, if not all, of the mainstream press will decline to review Douglas Horne’s remarkable new documentary entitled “The Three Bethesda Casket Entries: Revisited.”

Why is that? After all, with his new documentary, Horne makes an absolutely airtight case for the deep state’s secret, surreptitious introduction of JFK’s body into the deep state’s military morgue prior to the start of the official JFK autopsy itself and then later lied about it and covered it up. Why would the deep state do that? There is no innocent explanation for it. The earlier secret casket entries had to equate to illegality and cover-up. There is no way around it. That’s the power of Horne’s new documentary.

No one can come up with an innocent explanation for autopsy fraud. It necessarily equates to cover-up. And who is the only entity that the national-security establishment would be covering up for? It had to be itself, especially given that the scheme for the fraudulent autopsy was actually launched immediately after JFK was declared dead. That’s when a team of Secret Service agents, operating on orders, refused to permit the Texas medical examiner from conducting an autopsy on JFK’s body, which state law required, and forcibly removed the body for transportation to the Bethesda National Navy Medical Center.

My book The Kennedy Autopsy details numerous instances of fraud in the JFK autopsy. But for a much more detailed exposition of the autopsy fraud, see Horne’s watershed book Inside the Assassination Records Review Board and his video presentations on his YouTube channel, some of which he made for FFF conferences and for FFF projects relating to the JFK assassination.

But let’s just consider the three casket entries into the Bethesda morgue prior to the official start of the autopsy, which is the subject of Horne’s new documentary. U.S. military officials have always steadfastly maintained that there was only one casket entry — the official one at 8:00 p.m. by the Joint Service Casket Team.

With his documentary, Horne conclusively establishes that that has always been a lie. In fact, as Horne details, there were actually three casket entries. There can be no innocent explanation for three casket entries into the deep state’s morgue. None, especially when they lie about it.

So, why wouldn’t a documentary like this capture the attention of the mainstream press? Wouldn’t you think that some enterprising reporter or editor would find such a documentary worth reporting or commenting on?

Nope. And I’m convinced that the reason is fear — fear of the deep state — fear of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, which, as I have long maintained, are actually in charge of running the federal government, especially in foreign affairs.

The mainstream press knows that the national-security state obviously does not approve of any articles, commentaries, editorials, or reports that challenge the official lone-nut theory of the Kennedy assassination. The mainstream press also knows what every person in Washington, D.C., knows — that it’s not wise to get crosswise with the national-security establishment. Bad things can happen to mainstream entities that violate the JFK assassination taboo.

After all, everyone knows that the national-security establishment gets away with assassinating foreign leaders. But who wants to grapple with a deep state that wields the power to get away with assassinating a U.S. president? Certainly no one within the U.S. mainstream press.

Thus, the mainstream press remains silently supportive of an official lone-nut theory of the JFK assassination that lost validity and credibility a long time ago while, at the same time, continues to simply look the other way when conclusive evidence to the contrary surfaces — such as Horne’s new documentary.

The Kennedy assassination is why the American people lost their trust in their own government a long time ago. It’s also why they lost their trust in the mainstream press. Thank goodness for the Internet.

Reprinted with permission from The Future of Freedom Foundation.

The post The Mainstream Press’s Fear of the Deep State appeared first on LewRockwell.

In order to understand the agendas and baggage that Trump and Putin (and their respective ‘news’-media) will be bringing to the Putin-Trump private meeting on Friday August 15th, an honest history of the war in Ukraine is absolutely essential.

As will be documented via the links here, the war in Ukraine started actually on 20 February 2014 when a long-planned bloody 7-day coup by U.S. President Barack Obama’s agents to overthrow the democratically elected internationally neutralist President of Ukraine and replace him by a rabidly anti-Russian leader appointed by Obama’s neoconservative agent who organized the coup, Victoria Nuland (of “Fuck the EU!” fame on that occasion) succeeded at all of the coup’s objectives except capturing and transforming into a U.S. naval base, which still remains Russia’s largest naval base. Ever since 1783, that naval base has been located in Crimea, which since 1954 had been Ukraine’s only independently administered — or “Autonomous” — Province (or “Oblast”) because the people there have, for hundreds of years, considered themselves to be Russians and a part of Russia, which they actually were until 1954, when the Soviet dictator arbitrarily transferred Crimea to Ukraine.

Obama wanted the U.S. Government to control Ukraine so that America could position its nuclear missiles at the Russian border with Ukraine, less than a five-minute striking-distance away from hitting the Kremlin in Moscow so as to decapitate Russia’s central command. As both NATO’s Stoltenberg and Ukraine’s Zelensky have said, this war started in 2014, and NOT in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine (as the liars allege that the war in Ukraine started). Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine was instead Russia’s last-ditch effort to PREVENT there ever being ANY nuclear weapon from the U.S. or its colonies (‘allies’) from EVER being able to be positioned in the closest of all nations’ borders to the Kremlin, Ukraine. (Similarly, in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK was determined to prevent any Soviet nuclear missiles from ever being positioned in Cuba, a 15-minute missile-flight from decapitating America’s central command in DC.)

If you want to see a fuller description of the history of this war, click here, a 3,000-word (or ten-minute) article with 48 links to its sources, all online, so that you can immediately access the evidence and evaluate it for yourself. The only thing that I’ve said thus far in the present article that isn’t documented in that lengthier 3,000-word article, is Obama’s plan to change the Russian naval base in Crimea to an American naval base there, which is documented here, as having been a part of Obama’s coup-plan (the only part that he failed to achieve).

Consequently, all of the aggression in the Ukraine war was from the U.S. Government under Obama then Trump then Biden and now again Trump — and NEVER from Russia’s Government under Putin, who instead has been entirely reactive to, and defending Russians against, that U.S.(-and-‘allied’) aggression, which is aimed against, ultimately, Russia. Ukraine is, ever since Obama’s 2014 coup, merely the main tool in America’s long war to seize Russia. (To know the origin of that long war — “the Cold War” — click here. And Ukraine was a central part of the U.S. Government’s plan against Russia ever since America started the Cold War in 1945. So, Obama was actually culminating all of that prior 69-year U.S. Government operation to capture Ukraine — he achieved it.)

That is the real history of the war in Ukraine. However, U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-reporting assumes and presumes very different and largely OPPOSITE ‘history’ of the war in Ukraine, as will be shown by two typical examples of these ‘news’-reports, which will be cited here.

Yahoo News is the best news-site to see lots of U.S.-empire ‘news’-reports published that day from other U.S.-empire ‘news’-media but adding to each such report — which the original site usually lacks — a fully open reader-comments section abut the article, which, comments, if they are read being set to “Sort by Top,” will immediately display the most-up-voted, least-down-voted, of all of the comments about that article, and thus (since Yahoo News serves neither Republican billionaires nor Democratic billionaires but instead bipartisanly all billionaires) is displayed an immediate ‘polling’ of a fair samling of the U.S. public, about the given ‘news’-propaganda article. Here are highlights from two such ‘news’-reports dated August 8th and 9th, regarding the upcoming August 15th U.S.-Russia Summit meeting between Trump (historically-speaking the aggressor) and Putin (historically-speaking the defender), which is set to occur in Alaska:

——

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-russia-plan-truce-deal-140847014.html

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/CnLyA

“US and Russia plan truce deal to cement Putin’s gains in Ukraine”

8 August 2025

(Bloomberg) — Washington and Moscow are aiming to reach a deal to halt the war in Ukraine that would lock in Russia’s occupation of territory seized during its military invasion, according to people familiar with the matter.

US and Russian officials are working toward an agreement on territories for a planned summit meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin as early as next week, the people said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations. The US is working to get buy-in from Ukraine and its European allies on the deal, which is far from certain, the people said.

Putin is demanding that Ukraine cede its entire eastern Donbas area to Russia as well as Crimea, which his forces illegally annexed in 2014. That would require Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to order a withdrawal of troops from parts of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions still held by Kyiv, handing Russia a victory that its army couldn’t achieve militarily since the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Such an outcome would represent a major win for Putin. …

It’s unclear if Moscow is prepared to give up any land that it currently occupies, which includes the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe. …

Trump hasn’t implemented any direct measures against Moscow so far. …

Putin has repeatedly insisted that his war goals remain unchanged. They include demands for Kyiv to accept neutral status and abandon its ambition of NATO membership, and to accept the loss of Crimea and the other four eastern and southern Ukrainian regions to Russia.

Parts of Donetsk and Luhansk have been under Russian occupation since 2014, when the Kremlin incited separatist violence shortly after the operation to seize Crimea. Putin declared the four Ukrainian regions to be “forever” part of Russia after announcing that he was annexing them in September 2022. …

——

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/ukraine-not-land-zelensky-says-072205444.html

https://archive.ph/d00g6

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-russia-plan-truce-deal-140847014.html

“Ukraine must be part of peace solution, Zelensky says ahead of Trump-Putin meeting”

9 August 2025, BBC

Zelensky said in a Telegram post on Saturday that “Ukrainians will not give their land to the occupier”. He reiterated that Ukraine must be involved in any solution for peace, and said he is ready to work with partners for a “real” and “lasting” peace.

Zelensky said Ukraine “will not give Russia awards for what it has done”.

“The answer to the Ukrainian territorial issue is already in the Constitution of Ukraine. No one will and cannot deviate from this,” he added.

His statement followed comments from Trump at the White House on Friday that there “will be some swapping of territories, to the betterment of both”.

Sacrificing land for peace has been the Trump position all along. …

“Any solutions that are against us, any solutions that are without Ukraine, are simultaneously solutions against peace,” he said.

“We are ready, together with President Trump, together with all partners, to work for a real, and most importantly, lasting peace – a peace that will not collapse because of Moscow’s wishes.”

This is what Ukraine, and many European allies, were always worried about – Trump and Putin trying to do a deal without Ukraine present. …

There is little evidence that Ukraine is willing to accept a peace at any price – much less one that will be forced on it without its voice being heard.

——

It is obvious from those and the rest of the ‘news’-coverage of Trump’s upcoming, first-ever, meeting with Putin, that the billionaires who control these media (and the U.S.-and-allied Governments) want the public to support their stooge-leader of Ukraine (Zelensky) and oppose anything that Trump would agree to that Zelensky (these billionaires’ agent) opposes. If you will look at the top-most “Sort by Top” reader-comments at each of the two articles, you will see that the public (their minds) have been effectively controlled by these billionaires: the comments are overwhelmingly pro-Zelensky and anti-Trump, and especially anti-Putin. This result displays what Walter Lippmann had referred to in 1922 as “manufactured consent” of the public to the given ‘democratic’ regime, and it is now done throughout the U.S. empire (if not throughout the world), in order to give the superficial appearance of democracy, where none actually exists.

America’s billionaires today are remarkably similar to the elite Southern plantation owners before the U.S. Civil War War who bred Black slaves, farmed them (after 1807), on huge plantations, by forcing female slaves to be constantly pregnant, through rape or otherwise, in order to increase production of that type of livestock, for sale. It produced around an additional million slaves in the northern south to be transported down to the “cotton” south to be auctioned off, without regard to any slave’s family or other personal ties. The basic mentality is the same as that of those slave-producers, auctioneers and other slavery-entrepreneurs. It’s the “libertarian” way: a person’s value is the person’s wealth; so, if all that a given person owns is his/her labor, then that is what the person’s value is. For the wealthiest, this is total freedom. That is the mentality of today’s billionaires, and of yesterday’s slavery entrepreneurs.

In order to provide reasonable hope for a better world, I have several times proposed replacing the “manufactured consent” type of ‘democracy’ that has been described here, and which is based upon elections to choose government leaders, and it replaces elections by using lotteries instead. This method of selecting leaders of the Government would prevent the ‘democracies’ that we have and that actually represent ONLY the few super-rich, and it would install instead authentic democracies, which truly REPRESENT the PUBLIC. That alternative and authentic type of democracy, is outlined here.

This article was originally published on Eric’s Substack.

The post The History of Ukraine’s War, vs. U.S-and-Allied ‘News’-Media’s Lies About It appeared first on LewRockwell.

Battle of Debaltseve

I will answer my question right up front: Yes! The reaction of the West, especially that of Donald Trump, to Russia’s current offensive all along the line of contact, is reminiscent of the panic that seized the West in 2015 following Ukraine’s loss in the Battle of Debaltseve. That battle came about in part because of the failure of Minsk I, and was the impetus for Minsk II.

So what does this have to do with the current situation in Ukraine? I believe that the primary reason Donald Trump dramatically shortened his 50-day deadline for Russia to agree to a ceasefire to 10 days, was because of the dire situation Ukraine now faces all along the line of contact. Debaltseve was just one battle, which Ukraine lost. The current battles underway are far larger and encompass the following agglomerations:

Toretsk (Donetsk Oblast): Intense battles are ongoing near Toretsk, including Ukrainian advances within Katerynivka and Shcherbynivka, and Russian advances in nearby areas such as Rusyn Yar and Poltavka. Russian and Ukrainian forces are contesting several settlements along key axes northwest and west of Toretsk. Elements of Russia’s 20th Motorized Rifle Division, supported by artillery and drones, are actively engaged in the area.

Pokrovsk: Pokrovsk faces concentrated Russian assaults and is currently a focal point of fighting, with Russian forces intensifying attacks across the front. Ukrainian defenders confront urgent threats within and around the city as Russia adapts new offensive tactics.

Chasiv Yar (Donetsk Oblast): Russia recently captured Chasiv Yar, a heavily fortified eastern city. This victory allows Russia to target Ukraine’s so-called “fortress belt,” a network of defensive strongholds, and opens further offensive opportunities in the region.

Zaporizhia Region: Russia maintains high-intensity bombardments—over 400 airstrikes on 16 settlements—leading to heavy casualties and destruction, marking continued contestation in this southern front.

Let’s first review the importance of the Battle of Debaltseve, which was fought between January and February 2015, and marked a major setback for Ukraine the Donbas region. Its importance stems from several key factors:

1. Strategic Location: Debaltseve was a critical transportation hub, particularly for its railway junction connecting the Russian-backed separatist-controlled cities of Donetsk and Luhansk. Control over Debaltseve allowed influence over supply lines and movement in the region, making it a focal point for both Ukrainian forces and Russian/separatist forces.
2. Ceasefire Violations and Minsk II: The battle occurred during a period of intense fighting despite the Minsk Protocol (September 2014), which aimed to establish a ceasefire. The escalation at Debaltseve exposed the fragility of the ceasefire and led to the signing of the Minsk II agreement on February 12, 2015, as international mediators (France, Germany, Ukraine, and Russia) sought to halt the violence. However, fighting continued even after the agreement, undermining trust in the peace process.
3. Military and Political Implications: The battle resulted in a significant defeat for Ukrainian forces, who were encircled and forced to withdraw under heavy pressure from Russian-backed separatists, supported by regular Russian troops (as reported by Ukrainian and Western sources). The loss highlighted Ukraine’s military vulnerabilities at the time, including issues with coordination, logistics, and equipment, while boosting the morale and territorial control of separatist forces.
4. Human Cost and Humanitarian Impact: The battle caused significant casualties, with estimates of hundreds killed (both military and civilian) and thousands displaced. The intense shelling and fighting devastated Debaltseve, exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in the Donbas region and drawing international attention to the plight of civilians caught in the conflict.
5. Geopolitical Ramifications: The battle underscored Russia’s direct involvement in the conflict, as Western governments and organizations like NATO cited evidence of Russian military equipment and personnel in Debaltseve. This intensified sanctions and diplomatic pressure on Russia, further straining its relations with the West and solidifying Ukraine’s push for international support.
6. Long-Term Impact on the Conflict: The fall of Debaltseve consolidated separatist control over key areas of the Donbas, setting a precedent for the protracted, low-intensity conflict that followed. It also shaped Ukraine’s subsequent military reforms and increased its reliance on Western military aid to counter Russian aggression.

We subsequently learned that Minsk II was a sham devised by the West to permit Ukraine to rebuild its military force. Angela Merkel made statements about the Minsk II agreement in interviews in 2022, specifically in June and December. In a June 2022 interview with Der Spiegel, she indicated that the Minsk talks helped Ukraine “buy time” to strengthen itself against Russia. She elaborated in a December 2022 interview with Die Zeit, stating, “The 2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to give Ukraine time. Ukraine used this time to become stronger, as you can see today. The Ukraine of 2014/15 is not the Ukraine of today.”

Following Merkel’s confession of the real purpose of Minsk II, Vladimir Putin publicly admitted that he had been deceived by the Minsk II agreements in statements made in November and December 2022. In a conversation cited in the book, Vladimir Putin. From the Annals of the XXI Century, Putin described the Minsk agreements as “nothing but sheer deception” and said that Western leaders used the process to buy time and prepare Ukraine for war. In December 2022, Putin elaborated that “no one was going to fulfill the Minsk agreements,” admitting, “It turns out that they also deceived us, and the point was only to pump Ukraine with weapons and prepare for combat operations. Apparently, we got our bearings late, to be honest.”

Now we have Donald Trump begging for a personal meeting with Vladimir Putin. While some in Russia have expressed fears that Putin is once again being offered the Charlie Brown meme of kicking the football, I think Mr. Putin has learned his lesson and is not going to reverse his stated policy. While many in the West are pushing the narrative that Putin will give up claims to Zaporizhia and Kherson, that is not true. Those two former oblasts of Ukraine are now, according to the Russian Constitution, legally part of Russia. Putin does not have the authority to change that fact without legislative action by the Russian Duma.

Given this fact, I believe the deal that Putin will offer to Donald Trump is a halt to military operations in Sumy and Kharkiv if, and only if, Ukraine withdraws its military forces from Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson; that NATO end all military support for Ukraine; and that the United States agrees to negotiate based on the draft treaty Putin presented to Joe Biden in December 2022. If Trump does not take that deal, the war will continue until Russia consolidates all territory east of the Dnieper River.

This article was originally published on Sonar21.

The post Has Putin Learned the Lessons of the Battle of Debaltseve and Minsk II? appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Jesse Trentadue.

Gateway Pundit

The post The Patcon Caterpilar Has Just Grown Anohter Leg! appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Gail Appel.

Daily Kos

The post Zbigniew Brzezinski’s parents were from the (Polish-)Ukraine. appeared first on LewRockwell.

Tim McGraw wrote:

This is a good, long video. I’ve always wanted to drive the length of Highway 395 along the eastern side of the Sierra. The scenery gets better and better heading north. I didn’t realize there were so many lakes. The Bodie ghost town is amazing. There is something special about the desert rats who lived along this highway. In the high desert, there’s nowhere to hide. 

The post Highway 395 along the Eastern Sierra; California’s Best Road Trip appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm.

The American Conservative

The post Israel IskNot an Ally—It’s a Liability appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm.

Activist Post

The post The Unlucky Elderly of America 2.0 appeared first on LewRockwell.